OCEANSIDE

Built half on thick concrete pillars, half on land, The Hungry Mollusk looks more like a weatherworn and salt-encrusted creature crawling back into the ocean than a recently closed pub. Designed long, narrow, and low, the dark-stained building was originally a gear house for fishermen, with one open floor. A remodel some fifty years ago added a second floor and a fireplace. The remodelers also replaced the back of the building, removing the rotting wood, and adding instead extremely expensive, impact resistant bay windows and siding. The Hungry Mollusk was then turned into an art gallery. The people of Rockaway, however, turned out to have very little appreciation for modern art, and the gallery was closed. Brief stints as a vacation house, a shed, a movie store, and a threadbare research facility soon followed, before the building was bought out and turned into half-home (top floor), half-pub (bottom floor). A few years ago, however, Henry the pub owner decided to retire, closing his doors and dedicating the space to the great love of his life: cats. With Urchin, his cat, and Sirius, his Newfoundland dog, presiding, Henry revamped the bottom floor of The Hungry Mollusk into heaven for Rockaway's stray cats. Old afghans, pillows, chairs, old dog beds, and couches line the long room. Cat hammocks hang from the ceiling and the custom-made cat wall installation. Potted plants decorate the empty spaces, while dimmed wall sconces and the roaring fire give the room a warm, cozy glow. Blankets are spread out in front of the large bay windows, and during storms, the ocean spray lashes right up against the glass. If cozy living isn't quite your style, however, the forest that fringes the cliff is a ten minute walk uphill. Here, Henry has built a series of more private outdoor shelters - nesting boxes, platforms, and bridges of various sizes, mounted through the trees like some great feline treehouse - where more wild cats can stay.

The beach tracks a path all the way from the cliffs to the bay, curving in response to the coastline before it peters off on either end in deference to the shipping port and bay. Noted for its soft, fine sand, the beach is most often a gray-gold, littered with debris washed up from the ocean. It is fairly flat, though a definite but subtle slope down is obvious, and the amount of beach available is very much controlled by the tides - as is evidenced from the driftwood and rocks that are present at the very 'top' of the beach. The entire beach is broken here and there by tiny streams and rivulets of fresh water, coming off of the cliffs: much colder than the ocean, wading (or walking across a log) is required to cross the shallow creek-like entities. Though there are no tidepools, really, sometimes during low tides starfish and anemones can be spotted, replete with tiny fish that nibble at toes. The beach itself will often cough up sand dollars, agates, and other, similar things for those with a collecting kind of mind. During sunny days, the beach is beautiful in its aquamarine water and gold sand; during darker days, it is no less beautiful, a reflection of a storm in the ocean.

Situated against the outer edges of the cliff that separates Rockaway Bay from the larger part of the shipping port, seal cove is left well enough alone by humans except for the daring few. The entrance is submerged entirely when the tide is in, allowing no access except for seals and fish - near the back of the cove, the cave curves upward to create ledges for resting that stay well out of reach of the waves. Soft, usually wet sand makes a path among the dark, sleek rocks leading inside; the light is all-natural and varies with the weather. Seals come here only to rest and recharge - when the weather is nice, they prefer to soak up the sun on the sandbars that emerge in the bay - and as such, smaller land animals will occasionally make their homes in the dry nooks and crannies. Accessible by a thin path down the side of the cliff and a certain penchant for rock-climbing, a large hole, hidden by rocks, allows passage into the uppermost chambers of the cove, a flat, warm expanse where the seals cannot reach. Except for the loud noise of the seals below, which echo magnificently, the space is, by all accounts, luxurious enough to fit at least six creatures the size of full-grown badgers - and perhaps more. Walled in on three sides, a bored creature can lean over the fourth edge and stare down into the cove below, watching the tide and the seals - and keeping an eye out for any sea spray.

On the far side of the cliff, where the headland curves outward and then back in, the old docks and spires and warehouses of Port Astoria snake up to the sky. Spanning at least a good half-mile down the coastline, only a very small percentage of the port is still in use - notably, the section where the train station is. Once every other month, a ship will wander through and put in at one of the two only surviving docks, hanging around for a week as it is loaded and unloaded with the necessary shipments. The rest of the port, though, is all but abandoned, perused only by interested photography majors or the occasional curious cat. A fire gutted the farthest end of the port some time ago; the buildings, made of stone to withstand the salt spray, emerged relatively unscathed, but the docks collapsed into ruined messes of charcoal. Now, the farther from the train station you get, the more wild and abandoned the place begins to be; plants sprout up between the broken slabs of concrete and barnacles encrust whatever is submerged during high tide. It's an empty, lonely place, a snapshot into a past that was and a future-that-could-have-been, but the town is well used to it now; it is usually only new arrivals that have any business in the area. Unlike its city counterpart (the industrial district), the port has been stripped clean of all unused boxes and supplies, though a few can be found here and there if you're willing to look in corners.